CrossBoundary Access

Building the electricity grid of the future in Africa, one connection at a time

Our Mission

Over 600 million people in Africa do not have power.

Studies show that mini-grids are the least cost method to bring electricity to over 260 million people, with the rest being connected through grid extensions and solar home systems (SHS).

CrossBoundary Access is on a mission to build a distributed utility for rural electrification in Africa.

At CrossBoundary Access, we believe that universal access to electricity is a vital step toward ending poverty.  Alongside our partners, we finance, own, and operate mini-grids and adjacent technologies that connect rural households, community institutions, and businesses to high-quality, renewable power.

We’re aiming to bring power to 1 million people by 2025 with our distributed utility – the grid of the future.

 

Our Solution

CrossBoundary Access is a distributed electric utility that raises capital for portfolios of solar mini-grids that it designs, builds, and manages

Our mini-grids provide households, community institutions, and businesses with clean, reliable, and affordable electricity

Mini-grids are infrastructure, so we use infrastructure finance principles to build the grid of the future

Our Approach

Raise

We raise and blend long-term infrastructure capital. This includes equity, debt, and concessional financing.

Design

We partner with developers to design mini-grids that provide high-quality power for households, community institutions, and businesses.

Build

We build infrastructure—we are a distributed utility with assets that are built to last.

 

Manage

We manage mini-grid portfolios to ensure they deliver high-quality service to customers and target returns to investors.

Open Source

We are open-sourcing our investment approach for mini-grids to accelerate universal energy access in Africa

What is Open Source?

Launched in 2020, CrossBoundary Access ‘open sourced’ the approach we and our partners developed to invest long-term, low cost infrastructure capital into mini-grids in Africa 

Why Open Source?

CrossBoundary Access and Shell Foundation explain why we are taking the next step in ‘open sourcing’ our financing approach for mini-grids to accelerate universal access to electricity in Africa

Explore our Resources

We are sharing the tools used to finance over $80 million of mini-grids in Africa

News and Insights

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Our Team

We are global experts on energy access